Ep. 176: Is the U.S.-Israel relationship heading for trouble? w/Ambassador Michael Oren
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I want to start by asking you about the state of the U.S.-Israel relationship. There is clearly now some daylight between the two countries. There's always been two pillars, or rather, principles in the U.S.-Israel relationship: no surprises and no daylight. Now we've had a lot of surprises. We are isolated in the world. As of tonight, we basically have no friends. Israel, like other American allies, rely on American power. That leads me inevitably to the question is, can Israel say no to Trump?

This episode of Think Twice is sponsored by the Jewish Future Promise, ensuring a vibrant and thriving future for Jews and Israel. Hello, and welcome to Think Twice. This week, we have an important conversation for you with historian and former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.

But before we start today's program, I want to remind you, as always, to like this video and podcast, subscribe to JNS, and click on the bell for notifications. Also, you still don't have to wait a full week for more of our content. There is a Jonathan Tobin Daily podcast where I share more news and analysis with you about the most significant issues we're facing today. You can find The Daily Show under Jonathan Tobin Daily on the JNS channel, wherever you get your podcasts.

And now to today's program. Can Israel and its supporters trust President Donald Trump? That's not a question most of them thought they'd be asking a few months ago when he returned to the White House. In his first term, Trump was inarguably the most pro-Israel president since the founding of the modern Jewish state.

But while the moving of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the holding of the Palestinian Authority accountable for its support of terrorism, the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and the brokering of the Abraham Accords have earned Trump the trust of the pro-Israel community, it's impossible to ignore the fact that there are presently serious differences between the two governments now.

With respect to the negotiations with Iran and those with Hamas, there seems to be a good deal of the daylight that was part of President Barack Obama's approach to Israel. The question is, will these differences lead to a breach between the two nations if, as is possible, Trump agrees to a deal that will allow Iran to keep its nuclear program or one that would allow Hamas to remain in power in Gaza?

The differences on these issues should not be exaggerated, as much of the liberal press, which is hostile to Israel, seems to be doing. Unlike Obama or Biden, Trump doesn't have appeasement of Iran or even of Hamas as his goal.

But he does dislike wars and wishes to avoid or resolve them in order to get on with the business of making deals and playing the role of peacemaker. More to the point, it's a reminder that even in an administration packed with people who are friends of Israel, no two nations have identical national interests, which means there are times when Israel may have to say no to even to a friend like Donald Trump

just as it did to less friendly presidents like Obama or Joe Biden, though we don't know what the consequences of such a series of events would be. Few people know more about the U.S.-Israel relationship than Michael Oren, and we're honored to have him back with us today.

Michael Oren was born in New Jersey, made Aliyah and served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces, and became one of the Jewish world's great historians, writing many books, including such essential works as Six Days of War,

Power, Faith, and Fantasy, and Israel 2048, The Rejuvenated State. He served from 2009 to 2013 as Israel's ambassador to the United States and wrote a fascinating memoir, Ally, My Journey Across the American-Israel Divide, that, among other things, talked about his time as ambassador. He was elected to the Knesset, where he served from 2015 to 2019, serving as a deputy minister in charge of public diplomacy.

He's also a successful writer of short stories and novels, as well as a frequent commentator on Israel and foreign policy. Michael Oren, welcome back to Think Twice. Good to be back, Jonathan. Hello. Michael, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. I want to start by asking you about the state of the U.S.-Israel relationship. There is clearly now some daylight between the two countries on Iran and possibly on the negotiations with Hamas.

The question is, are the fears about these differences exaggerated or being hyped by the media that is hostile to Israel? Or are we really heading for troubled waters? Well, we may be heading to trouble. We're not in trouble yet, put it that way. Traditionally, there's always been two pillars or rather principles in the U.S. relationship. No surprises and no daylight. I got most of my gray hair serving Israel in Washington during the Obama years.

Obama surprised us every day. He went to Cairo, gave a huge speech to change 40 years of American foreign policy. We had no advance warning of that. We never had an advance warning of any speech he ever gave about the Middle East. And ironically, it was Biden. Biden was very good at it. We had no surprises with Biden. And we had some policies we had some hard times with, but not surprises.

Now we've had a lot of surprises. We've had surprises with the renewal of the direct talks between the United States and Iran, something that Biden didn't do. He didn't have direct talks, he had indirect talks. With removing the sanctions on Syria, that was a surprise, a difficult decision because the Syrian regime was battling the Druze and we were supporting the Druze in Syria. It puts us at sort of indirect odds with the administration, with the White House.

A surprise that the president came to the Middle East, his first foreign tour, and didn't stop here. That was also a surprise. A surprise that we've been surprised, a lot of surprises that the special envoys were speaking directly to Hamas was a surprise. And the negotiations, too, for the release of Aiden Alexander, which, of course, was a great surprise.

source of joy for us, but also a surprise. Now we weren't involved in it. So that principle seems to have been fallen by the wayside or if it's been discarded, but it's certainly fallen by the wayside.

Then the second principle is no daylight. And just the fact that there are surprises causes daylight. And the issue of Iran is a very big deal. I don't know how right now, how much daylight there is on the Hamas issue. Because the news tonight in Israel is that Prime Minister Netanyahu has accepted Steve Witkoff's latest proposal for a ceasefire and that Hamas is digging in its heels.

So right now there's not much, but it could. I don't think that... In contrast to some people here who think that we have unlimited time and space to operate in Gaza, I don't think we have that. At some point, the president's going to start saying, "Okay, guys, wrap it up. Let's wrap it up." He wants to move on. He wants to move on with a peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia can't negotiate with us. We're fighting in Gaza. It's that simple. And there'll be further

So hurdles down the road. But the big, big issue, Jonathan, is Iran, Iran, Iran. And again, like you, I am relying on press reports and we've got to be very cautious when we do that. But according to the most recent press reports, what's on the table is an interim agreement that would freeze the enrichment process in Iran in return for lifting sanctions and unfreezing frozen funds.

And that, from an Israeli perspective, I'm sure will be very, very difficult for the prime minister to accept. And what could it do? It basically is going to let Iran...

Get off the map. Get off the mat. It will enable Iran, at the very least, to rebuild its air defenses that were destroyed by the Israeli Air Force. It will enable Iran to enrich itself again. I think it's counterproductive in terms of American foreign policy, but Iran will use that money to overthrow the current regime in Damascus and to reassert its sovereignty and its hegemony over Syria. It will use that money to rebuild Hezbollah, to rebuild Hamas, and to

we could find ourselves very quickly back on October 7th, 2023. And that's just the bottom line. I'm not giving you right, left, conservative, liberal here. That is the obvious course here. What the United States gets out of this, I guess it avoids some type of military conflict with Iran, which frankly has always been a mystery to me because the claim that it's either a deal or it's war is a false dichotomy.

That was something that Obama liked to say. They always said that. It was war diplomacy, false dichotomy because Iran has zero, and I stress zero ability to make war against the United States. You ever seen an Iranian war plan? You ever seen an Iranian tank? Yeah. They're not in the class of Israel or the United States, obviously. No, they can conduct terror operations, but that's what they do anyway.

And by the way, if you're going to give them more money, they're going to do more terror operations. That's what they do. So I just we're all kind of scratching our heads here. Yeah, that's the thing here. Now, clearly, in his first term, Trump earned the title that his supporters like to proclaim, that he was the most pro-Israel president in the history of the modern Jewish state. That earns him some trust. But how far can that trust extend?

If Trump really is interested in a nuclear deal with Iran, since as you've just said, it's difficult to imagine one that would not essentially guarantee the existence of its nuclear program and enrich it as Obama's deal did. Presumably Trump knows the difference between a good deal and a bad deal. That's always been his calling card. But is that where we're heading? I mean,

You know, it's reasonable for Trump to say, I want to try diplomacy before there's a war because I don't like wars. That's a reasonable position. But hasn't diplomacy always failed with Iran? And do we have confidence that the outlines of the deal that supposedly is being worked on

You know, I know Trump always talks up negotiations while they're going on. I don't want to read too much into his optimism about, you know, the dealings with Iran because he always does that whenever talks are going on. But are we really heading towards, you know, a Trump version of an Iran deal? My fear is, this is a fear, that American power is not being taken seriously.

So another surprise was the deal that President Trump cut with the Houthis while the Houthis were shooting at us. And that deal did not make America look strong. Just didn't. And the Houthis were celebrating. They actually denied there was a deal. And they celebrated it by shooting missiles at, you know, Hungarian Air Force. Putin does not seem to be taking it seriously anymore. And that is always a source of concern. Israel always has a paramount interest, Jonathan, in America that is perceived as powerful.

That is, the worry is that it has credibility, that it's able to project power in an effective way. And I've always feared, that was my fear during the Obama years, that America no longer had that. And Israel, like other American allies, rely on American power and the credibility of American power. Well, that leads me inevitably to the question is, can Israel say no to Trump? Has it had at times under Obama on your watch?

And Biden, too. But more to the point, do you think it's possible or imaginable that Israel would go ahead and attack Iran's nuclear sites while Trump was negotiating with Tehran or even after the U.S. struck a deal with the regime? And what would be the possible consequences of offending Trump in that way? You would not ask all the right questions. All the right questions. I do a lot of interviewing on Israeli news, and I ask those same questions. Same questions. Are we prepared to say no?

Are we prepared to act in defiance? And are we prepared to bear the cost? Now, those are three, you know, certainly faithful questions that the prime minister is going to have to face. It's true. I mean, they could strike a deal and Israel could say, as we said in 2015, that this deal does not bind us, doesn't obligate us in any way. The question is to them, do we do something? We didn't do anything after 2015. We did not.

Even when Iran egregiously violated the JCPOA and egregiously violated the NPT, we didn't do anything. So listen, our credibility is very much on the line here, too. We have cried a lot of wolf with Iran and have not that much. And this has been crying wolf for like 15 years. I mean, this is a new issue since, I mean, perhaps Israel came closest to attacking Iran back then.

And Prime Minister Netanyahu's term when he was serving, when Ehud Barak was his defense minister. Yep, 2012. Reportedly, the IDF was the one who said no. IDF said no. Mossad said no. Everyone and their mother said no. Now, I don't know what they're saying, but Netanyahu was perceived as someone who backed down then. If you remember, he gave that speech in the UN where he drew a bomb and a red line across the bomb that...

The cartoon, yeah. As a show, thanks for doing that. The Obama administration categorized him as, you remember if I used that word on your... Yeah, right. You can use it. They called him chicken shit. And that's it. Because that was the thanks he got. But the fact is that at that point, once he drew the red line, the word got out, we weren't going to act. And the red line was drawn at 250 kilograms.

of 20% in rich uranium. Okay. We've succeeded. The Iranians have succeeded that by far today. And we still haven't acted. Yeah. Well, I want to just... I'll poke one more time because you're right. Israel has cried wolf and it has never acted as, you know, people kept... People keep... Over the last 15 years, people ask me, well, when are they going to attack? And I'm like, well, I don't know. I mean...

Probably not right now. But I'm really interested in the question of the consequences of offending Donald Trump. I mean, it's one thing

you know, get into a confrontation with a president who, as you wrote, as you experienced and wrote, was not what was what was the line from one of his, you know, not exactly in love with Israel. Donald Trump is a different story. You know, he's established, you know, a relationship in a way that, you know, certainly his American supporters, you know, like to talk about.

How would that even work out if Israel said, okay, Donald Trump, you've made a deal, but not only do we think it's a bad idea, we're going to blow it up? Keep in mind that it's also happening at an extremely delicate time for Israel. We are isolated in the world, Jonathan. As of tonight, we basically have no friends. It's the French, it's the Canadians, the British, and now the Germans and the Italians are isolated.

are distancing themselves from us, even considering altering their trade relations with us. Very severe. 32% of our foreign trade is with Europe. And so we're hanging by a rather slender thread here. And we're highly dependent on the administration for ammunition, not just vetoes in the Security Council, but ammunition. If we could be perceived as being vulnerable, we're dependent on the United States for missile defense too.

So that vulnerability has to be taken into account. Yes, Israel has the right. We have the sovereign right to act as we perceive it in our self-defense. In this case, it's not just self-defense. It's our survival. We have that right. We have a duty. But we have to take into account realities. And these are the realities. We're a small state that has been fighting a vicious war for 19 months now. Our army's tired. Our munitions are low.

and we're isolated. So you have to take all that into consideration. Yeah. That leads me to think that it's just not going to happen. I can't imagine Prime Minister Netanyahu

basically adding Donald Trump to the list of countries, you know, in the United States, the list of countries that are angry with it. It doesn't seem imaginable to me. And that just points, as you just alluded to, to Israel's dependence problem, I think, as you've described it, in that it is stuck with just one main ally in a hostile world on which it depends not merely for diplomatic support, but also for arms.

And this is a question that comes up. I think there's an obvious answer, but is there a plausible alternative to such dependence or is it just a fact of life that for all the fact that Israel is a regional power, it's still a small country and it must depend on the United States?

Well, you may know this. I'm a longtime opponent of American aid to Israel. I published extensively about it. I think it was a little bit prophetic because now everyone seems to agree with me that that dependence was not in our interest during this war and that we should certainly be reducing our own vital forms of ammunition, tank ammunition, artillery ammunition. But beyond that, I want the aid. I think the aid is the wrong message to our neighbors. We're an affluent, strong country.

should be able to stand on their own two feet. And the aid, which was once basically 50% of our national defense budget, is now much smaller than that. And in return for that aid, the impression is created that we're a vassal state and that we can be arm-twisted with that aid. And there isn't so much criticism in the United States, even on the campuses. Israel is killing Palestinians with American money, with American bombs.

Or we can protest, we condemn Israel because we pay for Israel with our tax dollars. Okay, enough of that. But I do want us to enter into a partnership with the United States, a partnership in areas in which Israel can contribute materially to America's security through cyber, through AI, and now through laser. Think of the areas in which we excel that are combat tested. We have a lot to give to the United States, and the United States has a lot to give to us, but that's a completely different relationship.

And we are not, Israel has not always been so isolated as it is now. Now it is, I would say, supremely isolated. But, you know, before the war, even with Israel's, you know, government, which was at odds with a lot of Western European governments, the relationship was we were not isolated the way we are today. Today is something I've almost never seen in my life.

With the possible exception of a few weeks after the Yom Kippur War, when the European states wouldn't let Nixon's SkyTrain of resupply to Israel, wouldn't let the jets land in Western Europe. Do you remember that, Sean? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And obviously, and then the Arab oil boycott, which also made... Forgotten by most people, but it was a very big deal at the time. Yes.

I'd like to drill down a bit about the dilemma Israel faces in Gaza.

It's arguable that Israel's two main war aims since October 7th, we hear it all the time, freeing the hostages and eradicating Hamas, have always been mutually exclusive in that the only way to get all the hostages is to give Hamas what it wants. And that is incompatible with the goal of defeating it and ensuring it, you know, or anything like October 7th can never, you know, happen and that they can never return to power. As much as Prime Minister Netanyahu still says that Israel can do both,

Is it still stuck with that choice in which it's going to have to choose between one of the two? Yes, of course. I've said this pretty much from the first day of the war. The two war aims were mutually exclusive, not reconcilable. You're either going to destroy Hamas or you're going to free the hostages. You really couldn't do both. There was a way that it appeared you could reconcile them by ratcheting up the pressure on Hamas and getting them to relinquish hostages. But...

We found out that sometimes when you ratchet up pressure on Hamas, they don't relinquish or redeem the hostages, they shoot them. So there you have another dilemma out of which there's really, there's no real solution to that dilemma. And now it's played out in a way that it's not quite clear what our war aims are anymore. Because sometimes we're having another major offensive in the Gidom chariot operation in Gaza.

has now said the goal is total victory. But if it's total victory, then why are you negotiating for interim ceasefires? Certainly the United States didn't do that with the Japanese and Germans in World War II. And then the other day he came out and said the goal of the war is to realize President Trump's vision of a Gaza Strip pretty much denuded of its civilian population and transformed into a Mediterranean Riviera. So what is the goal here? It's not quite clear. And that...

Well, that raises the point that Trump's vision for Gaza isn't compatible with the negotiations that his envoys have been conducting. He's incompatible with everything. Yeah. And Trump has moved. He's gone from talking about moving the population of Gaza out...

And yes, transforming God's trip into a major resort. But then he began to express concern for the welfare of the Palestinians. We have to do something about them. They're suffering. We have to give them humanitarian aid. So he backtracked on that. A tremendous amount of confusion and fog here, I must tell you honestly, Jonathan. And the only thing that's not confusing is

is Israel's isolation. And we haven't even talked about the internal situation here. Well, that's my next question. Please, go. We're on a roll here. That leads inevitably to the state of divided Israeli society, as was the case with the debate over judicial reform

The bitter arguments about war goals and the hostages are helping Hamas. I think you've even said that. But is there any way to avoid that or to calm it, no matter what the government says or does? Because these are just two very stark choices. Anybody who spent Saturday night

in Hostage Square across from the art museum in Tel Aviv, as I have a couple of times, knows that, which is the epicenter of national trauma, it's sort of, it's incompatible with this, of defeating Hamas, which seems like the logical goal for a nation state to have against an organization committed to its destruction.

You can't solve this. It's the square peg in the round hole. It's a particular Israeli hole because we have this unwritten covenant that says if we send our kids out to battle and they're taken captive, then the state will do everything in its power to redeem them. Or if our citizens are taken captive, we'll do everything in our power to secure their release.

And that goes to our national resilience, because many Israelis, including many people in my family, many people in my staff say, if we don't get the hostages back, I'm not sending my kids to the army. So it becomes a strategic interest, not just a moral interest. We have to think about not this war, but the next war. And if there's a next war, we don't get the hostages back, who's going to come? Who's going to show up for reserve duty?

And that's going to be a big, big issue. Big issue. On the other hand, if you if you empower Hamas and let it stay in Gaza, then you're guaranteeing you've got a next war. And you'll have the next. Here you go. And possibly hostages and the whole thing.

So more Israelis are going to die, not just because Hamas is going to survive and reconquer Gaza and rearm itself and mount the next October 7th 10,000 times, by the way, they say they're going to do it until they destroy us. But the thousands of terrorists we're letting out of our jails will go back to killing Jews. We know that 80% of them in the past have gone back to killing Israelis. So Israelis will die. So you may get 20 live hostages, but you're going to get

hundreds, perhaps more, of dead Israelis as a price for this. So no matter how you look at it, that you come up against this wall, and all we can do, you know, and everyone has a very, I think, fervid feeling about Benjamin Netanyahu. I've never met anybody who's neutral about him, right? One way or the other. But irrespective of how you feel about him, you've got to wake up in the morning and say a little prayer. You've got to say a little bracha, that you are not in his shoes, that you don't have to make these calls.

And frankly speaking, Netanyahu has been in office entirely too long and is entirely too divisive at this moment and lacks credibility. Maybe a different leader, maybe a different leader would come out to the people of Israel and say, listen, I don't sleep at night. I'm tearing my hair out of this. My heart is broken. But I'm the prime minister, not just of today. I'm the prime minister of Israelis tomorrow. And I have to take the most difficult decision.

which is to defend our borders, to ensure that there's a chance for peace because Arab states will make peace with us because we're strong, not because we're weak. And this is a decision I have to take, and please bear with me to know that I'm taking all the responsibility for this on myself. Now, you haven't heard those words. And Israelis have to be talked to, have to be communicated. And...

It's tragic because one of Netanyahu's greatest assets was his ability to communicate. He was a great communicator. And we're missing that communication today. And now a word about our sponsors. At the heart of the Jewish people is a promise that ensures that our traditions, values, and future endure for generations. The Jewish Future Promise is a movement I endorse. It is a moral commitment to securing that future.

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Well, you've recently written about how foolish it is for anyone to underestimate or write off the political future of Benjamin Netanyahu. And that's something everyone in journalism should certainly keep in mind because I think everybody in journalism at one point or another committed that fault. But nobody, not even Netanyahu, is politically or literally immortal.

What do you think of his chances of survival or winning another election and who could succeed him as the leader of the national camp to go out and give that statement that you'd like somebody to make? Chance is not bad. Or is that a question that can only be answered once he's given up politics? He's not given up anything. He, again, it's always premature to eulogize him politically. If there are elections held tomorrow, he'd probably do pretty well. Yeah. He has a solid base. He has a solid base of 30% right off the bat.

And Netanyahu once said famously, I don't care how the left divides its votes. At the end of the day, it's still the same piece of pie. And frankly, since October 7th, that pie has gotten smaller. That piece has gotten smaller. That's not the impression that Americans get from reading, you know, certainly, you know, the New York Times or even much of the Israeli media, which is always, you know, writing that, you know, everybody hates him. But even people who hate him

may be hard-pressed to find someone who they can trust to replace him. That's the deal, yeah. If you want to look at a video clip that will teach you everything you need to know about Israeli politics of the last quarter century, go on YouTube and get a clip called The Beebesitter.

It was from the collection in 2015 where... I remember it, yeah. Parents come... You know it. Come to the door and, you know, he's the babysitter. They don't want anybody else. The parents don't want Sippy Livney and they don't want Dior LaPierre. They only want Bebe, even though they don't like him. They don't want him to be the babysitter, but he's the babysitter because he's the one who's going to say that your kids are sleeping soundly. And...

Even today, you ask Israelis, who would you rather have? And there's always going to be the candidate du jour. Okay, so why was Benny Gantz? And then it was Gotti Eisenkot.

And now it's Bennett who may or may not run, but Bennett's going to have a hard time convincing people who feel betrayed by him in the previous elections, by the right, his white ring voters. He's got a hard time getting them. And the question is, can he get the mainstream voters? Can he get the center? There's going to be a lot of contenders for that center. And then does, because the center is strong enough, will it hold?

in the truly poetic sense, right? Will the center hold? Yes. Can the center hold? Yes. Can the center hold, you know, vis-a-vis now the right wing, which has gotten much stronger since October 7th?

Yeah. So, yeah, the math is still the math of Israeli politics. And as Bibi said, I don't care how the left divides its votes. It's still the same piece of shrinking pie, whatever, shrinking piece of pie. And the number of religious voters, you know, for the Haredi parties continues to tick up slightly. And also the nationalists. Which is the demography that panicked people about judicial reform, isn't it? Right. Right.

So there you have it. So do not discount him in any way. I would not. I want to ask you about a piece you recently wrote about the need to develop the Golan if Israel is going to be able to hang on to it. How do you feel about Trump's embrace of the new Syrian regime? And what will that mean for the Golan and Israeli security? Because obviously, I'll believe that a government in Damascus will join the Abraham Accords when I see it.

And as you already mentioned, Iran would like to take back Syria. But if this regime survives and if it remains in Donald Trump's good graces, aren't we back to talking about giving up the Golan to make them happy? This is what I wrote about. I've been trying to get the government to develop the Golan for 15 years now. And I haven't got almost nowhere. My plan was to get 10,000 Israelis up on the Golan every year, 100,000 in a decade.

And for the fact that it's part of the country. Yes, it's great that President Trump recognized it as part of Israel's sovereign territory, but we don't act as such. And we basically leave it on the negotiating table all the time. And...

The issue in Syria is complex. Let me explain. Syria, you know, is a state created by the French to meet French interests. It's cobbled together all these different ethnic and religious and tribal interests into one country. And after the French left, basically they were kicked out in 1946, Syria was always held together by a preponderance of brutal power. It's the only way that this disparate group of communities were held together.

between 1946 and 1967, they had 16 violent coups. You know, the president would wake up one day, the palace would be surrounded by tanks, they'd take them out and shoot them, and the next guy would go in there until the next morning they woke up and the palace was surrounded by tanks. It was a banana republic without bananas.

Very well. Well said. But they had a lot of guns, unfortunately. And then the Assad's came in and they exercised that brutal, brutal power. You're not going to be so Syrian, you're going to be dead or you're going to disappear in one of our jails or we'll barrel bomb you or gas you whenever. Okay. This is what the Assad's did. And when you take away that central brutal power, Syria is going to unravel again.

Now, that may not be the worst outcome from Israel's perspective because Syria as a state since its inception has done nothing but threaten its neighbors, including us, especially us, but not just us. It's threatened Jordan. It's threatened everybody. It hasn't been a good neighbor, old Syria. And so maybe Syria's breaking up into many states that maybe threaten one another but don't threaten up wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But you have to ask yourself is whether...

The current regime has that, can exercise that type of brutal power. It's tried. It's already massacred Alawites. It's tried to massacre Jews. It's acting true to form. It's enacting Sharia laws in Damascus. So it's not like the secular, Western-loving, what it's appearing to be, okay? And I wouldn't necessarily bet on its longevity. I wouldn't, given Syria's past. You have to look at Syria through a historic lens. America...

for not for decades, but for centuries has been looking for the Middle Eastern, the George Washington. They want to find someone who's going to be, you know, the man, the white horse. I don't know if this man is. And I wouldn't put my bet on it, but he's certainly better than what was there. The Iranians, he was better, certainly. And it'd be great if they made peace with us through the Abrahamic Horus. But as they said in that article, there's going to be a price and the price is the Golan Heights.

And so we better get cracking and start building. Yeah, the price of the Abraham Accords is great, but, you know, sort of the price for the Saudis as a Palestinian state, the price for Syria is the Golan Heights. You've got to ask, you know, those

Those are very high prices. I think the price of the Saudis is disgusting a Palestinian state. Yeah. I don't think it's actually creating a Palestinian state. Well, I don't think the Saudis actually want a Palestinian state. No, they understand that a Palestinian state, and what they call the West Bank, is within 48 hours going to become a Hamas state and it'll take down Jordan and half the Gulf. They are much more intelligent than that. Yeah. But they do have a type of public opinion.

that has to be assuaged. And, okay, they want us to discuss the Palestinian state. They want a pathway. Okay, pathway is the thing with gravel. Pathway. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, unfortunately, a lot of the people who comment about the Abraham Accords, you know, don't really understand what the Saudis really want there. But I want to turn now to an issue that you have a particular insight in as someone who grew up in the United States and has worked here, and that is the surge of anti-Semitism we're experiencing right now.

How shocked are you, by the way, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic attitudes have been mainstreamed in the media, the academy and culture in recent years. Whatever you saw was happening during your four years as ambassador, it's metastasized since then. I'm going to shock you with my answer. I'm kind of relieved.

I'm relieved and vindicated. So I grew up in a tough neighborhood. I was the only Jewish kid, and I experienced anti-Semitism in various forms. You know, I was a Christ killer. I was whatever, a money grubber, a power whatever, a hungry person, different types through university. So anti-Semitism was very much a part of my life. And when I would tell other American Jews about it, they'd shrug their shoulders and say, well, there's no anti-Semitism here. And now no one says that. No one says that.

And I'm fond of quoting Conor Crews O'Brien, that great Judeophile who said that anti-Semitism is a light sleeper. And now it's come out. And I'd rather the anti-Semites come out of the woodwork than they hide inside the woodwork. And we know where we stand. Again, I always look at things through a historical perspective. It's not just the history of Syria. It's the history of the Jews. And what we've witnessed in the last year and a half is the world reverting to form.

and that the period when you and I grew up was the aberration in Jewish history. It was the exception. And now we're going back to what our, you know, our great grandparents knew was that a world that was inhospitable to Jews in many ways. And for some Jews, for some communities, it has been so, so traumatic. I do a lot of what's called track two diplomacy. I travel around. I represent Israel, not this government of Israel.

I speak, I try to give a good sense of what's going on here as I'm doing on this podcast. But I was just recently in Australia and this is a Jewish community, just a vibrant, strong, rooted Jewish community. It goes back to the 18th century. And very Zionist too. And very Zionist and committed. And they, many Australian Jews I talked to said there's no future for us here. Just by simple demography, you know, that the

There's now 10 Muslims for every Jew, and the Muslim community is very anti-Israel and very anti-Semitic. Well, to follow up on that, you and I are both products of one of the elite schools, Columbia.

which was left-wing, pretty left-wing long ago when we were there. But the atmosphere today at a place like Columbia or any of the other sort of top universities is nothing like it was in the 70s or 80s or 90s. The long march of the progressives through our institutions and the indoctrination, really, of a generation of young Americans in woke ideologies like critical race theory, intersectionality, and settler colonialism have changed everything.

Everything, particularly the way Israel and Jews are discussed. In response, the Trump administration is seeking to take action against these schools. He may not want to go to war against Iran, but he's going to war against Harvard and, to a lesser extent, Columbia that have enabled or encouraged anti-Semitism.

But many, a lot of the American Jewish community, Jewish liberals, whether out of partisanship or genuine disagreement, are opposed to his war on academia. Where do you stand on what the administration is doing? It is a delicate, delicate walk to balance. I taught at these universities. I've studied at these universities. I probably couldn't teach at them again. I couldn't study at them again. They're very different. Yeah.

The claim that the universities have become hotbed, not just of anti-Semitism, but of anti-Americanism, that they instill in their students a hatred of their own country, their own civilization. And

I think it's legitimate to say, why should the American taxpayer have to pay for this? Legitimate. You want to teach your kids whatever you want to teach them. You want to teach them Marxism. You want to teach them Maoism. Teach them. But, you know, American taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for that. I'm not an American taxpayer anymore. You should know. But I can understand that. I can understand that entirely. And there are strategic issues here, too, because if you're producing leaders who think this way, what does it mean for America?

You know, the future of the United States. I would often ask my students, this is now I have not taught for 15 years. I would say, I would ask, okay, who's willing to go and fight for your country? Who's willing to die for your country? There'd always be some, you know, some hard-ass guy in the back who would raise his hand, but just one, not more than one. And these are the universities that used to produce leaders who with a sense of noblesse oblige, you would go out and fight. All you have to do is look at the memorial walls on these campuses and see the number of students who

Died in the Civil War, died in World War I, died in World War II. By the time you get to Korea, it starts ebbing off. Vietnam, you know, two or three sad people, but after that, nothing. Almost nothing. Yeah. And that's saying something. One of the great advantages that Israel has is that we have a very loyal elite. We have a very patriotic elite. We have an elite that's willing to go out and fight. We're willing to risk their lives for this country. That's an extraordinary advantage that we have that the United States right now doesn't have. And...

I don't think you should make peace with the fact that you don't have that type of commitment anymore for the elites. So, okay, that's a legitimate claim. Whether you should use the hammer of anti-Semitism to break up, you know, the Marxist monopoly here is another question. Yes, there's a problem with anti-Semitism, but the far deeper question is...

is the role of these universities in creating a culture that is inimical to the American idea. I wrote another article. I write a sub stack called Clarity. And I wrote an article during the trials of, you remember, the presidents of Harvard and MIT and University of Pennsylvania, at least Stefanik. At least Stefanik put them on the grill.

Lee Stefanik, my former student from Harvard, by the way. Okay. There's nachas for you. And he did very well. But I wrote an article called Mein Kulturkampf. I know you appreciate that line, Mein Kulturkampf. And knowing that Jews have often been sort of at the spearhead of cultural kamps, of cultural struggles, it was the case of the Dreyfus trial, which was ostensibly about antisemitism, but it was really about the soul of France. Yeah, it was about the revolution. Yeah.

And this congressional hearing, too, was ostensibly about anti-Semitism on campus, but it was really about America. It still is about America, even though, you know, ostensibly has a lot to do with anti-Semitism. It doesn't mean that the anti-Semitism is not real. It certainly is real. But it's not the fundamental problem. The anti-Semitism is a symptom of the problem.

Yeah, I mean, this is a point that I make all the time as JNS readers know very well. This is a war on Western civilization in which the Jews are really just the sidebar. You know, we're the canaries in the coal mine. It's very noticeable. But the reason why I believe Trump is right to take a sledgehammer to, you know, to academia is

is because this is a war for the future. This is a battle about the future of America, not even so much about the future of the Jews, as important as that is to us, because if these institutions keep being under enthrall to these toxic left-wing myths,

then that affects everybody in this country, not just the Jews. But that is a point that a lot of our friends in the organized Jewish community just don't want to make because they're still so committed

to these institutions. Everybody wants to send their kids to Harvard and some of them want to send them to Columbia, you know, as well. But, you know, in spite of everything, they don't want to be on the side of sort of the working class hero who is taking, as you say, you know, a hammer to Harvard and Columbia. They want to be on the side of the elites, the credentialed elites who are the ones who oppose Trump while it's the working class voters. We can understand that, though. You know, it was the...

naming a building, you know, Goldberg Hall, all right, in New Haven, was the sign that you had made it, that the American Jewish dream had been fulfilled. And now to have that paradigm all of a sudden, not just change, but sort of, you know, pulled out from under you is very, very hard, very hard. And, you know, we're going back to the days where, you know,

And basically Brandeis, you know, Brandeis University. My father was the director of a Jewish hospital for 40 years. That hospital was created at the early 1900s because Jews couldn't get, Jewish doctors couldn't get jobs in regular hospitals. Growing up, I worked in a country club, a Jewish country club. Same country club as Columbus, by the way. Yeah, because Jews couldn't get into other country clubs. We're going back to that, by the way. You know, I'm in, I'm a writer. I'm in the publishing world. Jews can't publish books in America anymore. And we're now creating Jewish books.

publishing houses again to publish Jewish authors. We're going back to the country clubs and we're going back to, you know, the Jewish hospitals and, you know, to Brandeis University because Jews can't publish anywhere else. Okay, we're reverting to form.

Well, that's a healthy response. My problem is with the people who aren't responding in a healthy way. But that's an issue.

no longer holds. The old style was you identified the anti-Semite, you exposed the anti-Semite, you shamed the anti-Semite, and then you re-educated the anti-Semite. You can get them to contribute to the ADL. That was my friend Abe Foxman's... Ever, but here. But that...

model doesn't hold anymore because the anti-Semitism don't have to be identified. They're out there. They're not going to be ashamed. They're proud. And they're not going to be reeducated. Someone out there shouting, you know, globalizing the intifada, you're not going to sit down and have a conversation with them about them. But anti-Semitism. But what we have learned is that there's a new model. That is, you can fight them in the Churchillian sense. You can fight them in the classroom. You can fight them in the courtroom. You can fight them in the media. You can fight them. And

And that fight so far, over a year and a half, has been pretty successful. Yeah. Well, there is some good news. Well, finally, Michael, tell us a little bit about what you're working on. The last time you were on this program, you told us about your 2048 project and the possibility of a book on the War of Independence. What's the update for fans of your books? The rejuvenated state? Yes. Okay. So I was going to write a book about the War of Independence, but another war came about, and I now have a contract to write a book about this war.

Now, this is a book not about October 7th. There are upwards of 170 books already about October 7th. But The Albert Timmons will be the introduction to this book. It's about a war and a war that could be as transformative as the 1967 war, if not more so, totally transforming the Middle East. A lot of it depends on how these negotiations pan out with Iran. Really. We can either go back to October 7th or we can go into something very, very different. Very different.

And I hope people in Washington understand that. And I say this, you know, not in a critical voice. I said this from the heart, okay? Don't miss this historical opportunity. So that's what I'm working on. It's very rough. On October 8th, 2023, I created an NGO called the Israel Advocacy Group, which basically fills a gap. And you know that gap. No one's doing enough to defend this country internationally.

I do it on the news. I do it in written form, briefings, and with track to diplomacy around the world. So I have a wonderful staff that works incredibly hard to do this. And there are dark days, I must tell you, but we're not in any way dispirited. We keep on fighting the fight. Yes. Well, thanks, Michael, for being in the fight for us. Thank you. And also for joining us today and for your insight. As always. Shalom shalom. Kol Tov.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, everything. You can follow Michael Oren on X at Dr. Michael Oren and read his articles at his excellent sub stack, claritywithmichaeloren.substack.com, to which you should definitely subscribe as I do.

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